As long as people have existed there have have been individuals who have needed to be quiet and alone with God. These deep introverts have craved the contemplative life. One ought never to consider them useless, for to do so is to buy into the fallacy that idle hands are the Devil’s workshop, an idea related to a hyper-Protestant work ethic. We humans need to be quiet. We need to contemplate. And we need to be idle in God sometimes.

Consider, O reader, the case of St. Abraham of Kratia (474-circa 558). He wanted mainly to be solitary and to lead a contemplative life. So he became a monk as a young man. The native of Emesa (now Hims), Syria, had to flee to Constantinople because of raids on his monastic community during the period of migrations within the Roman Empire during the fourth and fifth centuries CE. At the capital city the saint became the procurator of a monastery. Then he, aged twenty-six years, became abbot of the monastery at Kratia, Bithynia. After ten years he needed solitude badly, so he ran away to Palestine. But his bishop forced him to return to Kratia. Then the saint became Bishop of Kratia, a post he held for thirteen years. Finally, in 525, he returned to Palestine, solitude, and the contemplative life for good. It was, after all, his vocation.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

NOVEMBER 16, 2012 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINT MARGARET OF SCOTLAND, QUEEN

THE FEAST OF SAINT GIUSEPPE MOSCATI, PHYSICIAN

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O God, whose blessed Son became poor that we through his poverty might be rich:

Deliver us from an inordinate love of this world, that we,

inspired by the devotion of your servant Saint Abraham of Kratia,

may serve you with singleness of heart, and attain to the riches of the age to come;